Tag: Jobs

It has been one year since President Obama took office and announced a stimulus bill that was to improve jobs.The data suggests that the job market continued to deteriorate this past year. Unemployment is up to 10% from 7.4%. Job Openings are down 5.48%

Job Openings, as measured on careerbuilder.com, have not improved from one year ago. Nationwide, job openings at January 31, 2010 were 5.48% lower than January 29, 2009. Total job openings stand at 222,189 as compared to 235,059 last year, a decrease of 12,870. 37 States have lower job openings as compared to last year.

The Best State for Job Openings is Indiana as measured by growth. Indiana had the largest gain in job openings, 887, up 17.4% from a year ago. Best States for Jobs also were Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. Florida and Ohio were the best large states for job openings. They were the only 2 states of the Top Ten Employment States to show increases in openings. 13 States had increases in job openings from a year ago.

The Worst State for Jobs was California. It has 3,667 less job openings from a year ago, a decrease of 14.18%. California also has the fourth worst employment rate in the nation. Unemployment in California is now at 12.4%, up 3.7% from a year ago. California is struggling on many fronts and an increasing jobless population will not help it turn around. For more on California see California Jobs Shrinking

Additional Worst States for Jobs are Texas, Illinois,Massachusetts and Arizona. They each had large job opening losses and double digit declines in percentage terms.

Another measure of job openings, the Conference Board’s Help Wanted On-Line Data Series is also indicating year over year decreases in job openings. The Conference Board Data for 2009 annual average job openings stands at 3,357,000, 1.1million below the 4,481,000 annual average for 2008. More importantly their average job opening number for 2009 is 2.4 million below the 2007 average job opening number. These are not good numbers. On an encouraging note,the Conference Board reported positive improvement in job openings in New York, Washington, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Delaware and New Jersey.

All 50 states saw their unemployment rates increase in 2009. See Unemployment by State 2009 for the entire 2009 list and unemployment changes from a year ago. Job openings must increase significantly nationwide if unemployment is to improve to acceptable levels. It is going to take some time for this to occur.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released state unemployment for December 2009 today. Every state in the U.S. saw its unemployment rate rise in 2009.

The Best State for Jobs and Employment in 2009 was North Dakota. It had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 4.4%. Its unemployment rate increased by 1.1% in 2009. South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas were also Top States for Jobs and Employment.
The Worst State for Jobs and Employment in 2009 was Michigan. Its unemployment ended the year at 14.6%, an increase of 4.4% in 2009. 21 states and D.C. saw their unemployment ranks increase by 3% or more in 2009. 2009 was a very bad year for those seeking employment. Nevada, Rhode Island, South Carolina, California and D.C. all were Worst States for Jobs and Unemployment in 2009. They all have unemployment rates of 12% or higher.

Minnesota and North Dakota had the smallest unemployment increases in 2009 with increases of only 0.8%. The Worst States forUnemployment Increases were West Virginia and Nevada which had increases of 4.6% in unemployment. The list of Best and Worst States for Jobs and Employment is below. It is presented from best to worst based on year over year changes. Politically, these are very poor numbers for the Obama administration. With the large health care bill off the table for now, let’s hope businesses will become a little more willing to hire in 2010.

Click on the category Best and Worst States for Jobs on the right navigation for our collection of articles on Jobs.

In our Job Openings post you will see the trends by state in job openings and what states are currently experiencing increased job openings. We also have published the List of Job Openings by State

******Editor’s Note: The rest of this post was published in April 2009 Go to Best and Worst States for our latest *********************

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the March State Unemployment rates this week. For our August 2009 listing and analysis of Best States for Job Openings click

We now have 8 states with unemployment above 10%. Michigan is the Worst State for Jobs with an unemployment rate of 12.6%. Oregon is also very bad for jobs with a rate of 12.1%. California, our most populated state, has an unemployment of 11.2% meaning that 1 out of 9 people are out of work. South Carolina also is a Worst State for Jobs with unemployment of 11.4%.

The Best State for Jobs in March was North Dakota at 4.2%. The other Top 5 States for Jobs were Wyoming at 4.5%, Nebraska at 4.6%, South Dakota at 4.9%. Iowa and Utah were tied for fifth with 5.2% unemployment.

We thought we would take a look this month also at how states that are ranked for small business are doing on the job front. In theory the better the small business environment the better the job environment. We used the recently released SBEC report. See: Best and Worst States for Small Business

The data shows that the Best States for Small Business are not all the Best States for Jobs at this moment. 5 of the top 10 Best States for Small Business, for example, have below average i.e. higher, unemployment. 45th ranked Iowa for example has the 4th best employment in the U.S.

As mentioned in the previous post, the SBEC index is primarily a tax based system and high or lower taxes are not the only reason companies grow and create jobs. It would appear intuitive over time business friendly states should create more business and jobs. We will continue to watch this during the cycle as the better states may grow first and faster.